Fotonauts Raises $1.1 Million, Shifts Fotopedia From Desktop To Web

We are big fans of Fotopedia (which is also known as Fotonauts), TechCrunch50 startup that turns your photo albums into collaborative Web pages about different topics and subjects. According to an SEC filing, Fotonauts raised $1.1 million in funding from Ignition Partners,Banexi Ventures and Jean-Marie Hullot, the founder of Fotonauts. Hullot confirmed the funding with TechCrunch. Previously, Fotonauts had raised $2.3 million in seed funding.

Recently launched Fotopedia is supposed to be a cross between Flickr and Wikipedia, serving as an archive of “images for humanity.” Fotopedia’s newest platform lets you turn any photo album from your photos into a Web page entry on Fotopedia, complete with tags, associated Wikipedia entry, and Google Map information where available. Hullot told us that Fotopedia is now completely web-based, (the startup previously debuted with a desktop client) and that users will no longer need the desktop client to create and publish slideshows on Fotopedia. The platform is not dropping the client all together, so users can still continue to interact with the desktop app.

On the Fotopedia web site, anyone can access albums for a variety of topics, places, people and more. There are over 300,000 high quality pictures organized into 18,000 “articles.” Each article is a Web slide show, along with the associated Wikipedia entry and Google Map. Each photo contains a good amount of metadata making it search-engine friendly. The encyclopedia tab on the site lets you access a indexed archive of photo albums on topics like geography, history, art and more.

Hullot told us that a significant amount of growth since its launch earlier this year, adding Facebook Connect and even venturing into marketing partnerships. The startup is set to announce a a joint partnership centered around the UN Climate Change conference next week.